Snoring is common among many humans. During snoring, a sound is produced while breathing during sleep. Snoring may be caused by the vibration of the soft palate and uvula, and, if left untreated, may lead to sleep apnea in which a person can experience abnormally shallow breathing or pauses in breathing during sleep. Sleep apnea can lead to daytime sleepiness, fatigue, trouble concentrating, and other undesirable side effects.
Furthermore, snoring is a nuisance for persons sharing a bed or room with the snorer. One person's snoring may cause the other person sharing a room to also experience uncomfortable or restless sleep and sleep deprivation.
Snoring is caused by obstructed air movement while breathing. This is usually due to a blockage of the breathing passage, which is often due to the person's tongue falling back into their throat while sleeping on their back. Accordingly, one manner to treat snoring is to condition the person to sleep on their side or stomach. Until now, it has proven difficult to train persons to sleep in a certain position.
Efforts have been made to develop a device or manner of alleviating snoring and sleep apnea. However, these efforts have resulted in devices which were ineffective, aesthetically or orthopedically unpleasing, or uncomfortable for the person to wear. For example, the conventional treatment device for obstructive sleep apnea is a cumbersome mask called a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device that has to be strapped to the sleeper's face while sleeping. Furthermore, these efforts are not aimed at training the person to sleep in a position in which snoring and sleep apnea are unlikely to occur. Accordingly, a need remains for a device and/or method that is effective in training a person to sleep in a position in which the person is not likely to snore or to suffer from sleep apnea, a device that is aesthetically pleasing, and a device that is comfortable for the person to wear.
In addition to treating snoring/apnea problems efforts have been made to develop a device that can monitor a person's sleeping patterns, particularly the occurrence of rapid eye movement (REM) associated with REM sleep. REM sleep is a stage of sleep that is characterized by rapid movement of the eyes. Total REM sleep for an adult in a typical 6-8 hour sleep session may consist of 90-120 minutes. Normally REM sleep first occurs about 90 minutes after sleep onset. The first REM period typically lasts 5-10 minutes, with each recurring REM state lengthening. The final REM stage may last up to an hour. REM sleep is characterized by phasic bursts of right or left movement of the eyeball. Phasic bursts are unusual movement at high speed. Normal eyeball movement during sleep is rather slow and lazy. By contrast, REM is intense with both eyeballs moving the same direction in tandem. Because of the rapidity of the eye movement under closed eyelids, detection of REM in a non-clinical setting has been difficult, however, one or more devices and methods disclosed herein are appropriate for meeting this challenge.
Detection of REM sleep and means to awaken persons during REM sleep cycles have potential quality of life and psychological benefits. It has been established that female and male sexual dysfunction can be ameliorated if the affected person is wakened during REM sleep. It has been clinically proven that those persons whose sexual dysfunction is primarily psychological, versus physical, often experience engorgement of sexual organs during REM sleep. Thus, a means to gently awaken such persons during REM sleep can provide a significant enhancement of treatment for sexual dysfunction.
These and other sleep-related conditions are widely prevalent with some estimates that there are 50 million habitual snorers in the United States. Amelioration of such conditions has been addressed in various patents and published applications discussed below. However, despite the plethora of devices described in these patents, few, if any, have proven to be commercially viable, largely because they are cumbersome and/or unduly interfere with the normal sleep process.
Another sleep-related condition is unwanted dozing while driving, or in other circumstances, where sleep is unwanted. While most prevalent in the context of long-haul trucking, any driver is a potential candidate to lose control of a vehicle by dozing while driving. A person monitoring a dangerous manufacturing process, standing watch in military combat, in a training environment or air traffic control are other situations where dozing could be dangerous. Thus, there is a substantial need for an effective remedy to limit the human carnage and property loss resulting from persons falling asleep where full attention is required. Despite this need, effective means to alert someone when he or she is in the process of falling asleep have not surfaced, largely because of cumbersome and unsightly anti-dozing devices developed to date.
Examples of previously patented approaches to addressing sleep disorders and conditions are discussed below.
Crossley U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,367 attempts to treat multiple sleep disorders, including sleep apnea and snoring, with a device that awakens the user with shock treatments when snoring or apnea is sensed.
Hobson et al U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,836,219 and 5,566,067 describe sensors attached to an eyelid of the user to detect sleep patterns. Signals from the sensors are fed by a wire to head gear containing apparatus to analyze the signals and sort them into sleep states, for example, wake, REM and non-REM (NREM). The '067 patent describes one system where a sensor, preferably piezoelectric, is attached to an eyelid to detect its movement. When that movement of the eyelid falls below a certain level it activates an audible alarm that alerts the user that he or she is dangerously dozing. This anti-dozing device was developed under a NIH grant for use as a safety system to prevent accidents caused by persons falling asleep while driving (column 1, lines 1-25 of the '067 patent).
Another apparatus and system for monitoring sleep related problems is Halyak U.S. Pat. No. 5,928,133. In this patent the sensor used is a transcutaneous, electrical nerve stimulation (“TENS”) electrode attached to a body's extremity (arm, leg) that senses physiological changes in the body corresponding to various sleep periods. The signals generated by the TENS electrodes are analyzed and when optimum signals are sensed a buzzer sounds to awaken persons from sleep during the optimal (for that person) wake-up time.
Multiple patents disclose devices which respond to the sound of snoring that, in turn, activate alarms, both auditory and vibratory, to wake up a snoring person. Such patents include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,644,330; 4,788,533; 5,458,105 and 6,544,199. The latter also discloses an unspecified sensor for measuring “changes in a muscle group” that is related to snoring. To date the acceptance of these patented anti-snoring devices has been very low to negligible because, inter alia, the alarms on the devices also wake up anyone else in the room and the sensors are inaccurate. In a similar vein U.S. Pat. No. 7,716,988 discloses a wrist mounted sensor to detect snoring of one or more persons which activates a vibratory device to awaken the snorer—and usually others in the same bed.
Patents attempting to identify particular sleep patterns have also issued. Loree U.S. Pat. No. 7,306,567 discloses an accelerometer strapped to a limb that monitors movement of that limb. That movement can be an indicator that the person is in a shallow sleep cycle when it is generally better to awaken a person from sleep. The accelerometer is linked to trigger an alarm, audible or visual, when the person is in the desired shallow sleep cycle.
A sleep apnea detector is disclosed in Moussavi et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,559,903. According to this patent an accurate diagnosis of apnea is difficult and expensive because symptoms are many and varied requiring several sensors recording multiple bodily functions. This patent describes a system where three sensors (two on the sleeping person and one recording background noise) allegedly provides sufficient data to diagnose sleep apnea.